By Edwin Cooney
On
the morning of Wednesday, October 11th, 2015, Birmingham, Alabama police were summoned
to a home in the northeast section of the city to investigate the death of a
one-and-a-half year old girl, Kelci Lewis.
Little Kelci had been brought to this home the evening before by her
mother Katerra Lewis. Ms. Lewis and her
friend, the resident of the home, left six children at the home without
supervision while they attended a nightclub.
In their absence, the oldest child, an eight-year-old boy, repeatedly
struck little Kelci because she wouldn’t stop crying. Not until the next morning did Katerra Lewis
discover that her baby girl was dead.
Police charged Ms. Lewis with involuntary manslaughter and have charged
the unidentified eight year-old-boy with second-degree murder. What I don’t grasp regarding this terrible
incident is why was this eight-year-old boy charged with murder rather than
something merely akin to murder such as involuntary deadly assault or deadly
child endangerment or something of that nature?
The
first story I read about this incident stated that Ms. Lewis was being charged
with involuntary manslaughter and was free on $15,000 bond. One of the stated purposes of this charge was
to “send a message to parents that they face serious criminal charges if they
leave helpless children in unsupervised circumstances.” Okay, fair enough, but I still believe that
it is counterproductive to charge an eight-year-old boy with murder.
There
are a lot of things to be observed about this almost kneejerk socio/political
reaction to this tragedy. First, there is nothing to be learned or gained from
a message in the news that an eight-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
Second, macho toughness is merely an aggravation of this sad and disturbing
situation, as it provides no perspective or potential for healing an unhappy
community. Third, we have a history of double standards when it comes to murder
in this country. If an eight-year-old
boy kills, it’s murder. If the state or
federal government murders, the act is cleansed via the thin veneer of
legality. A former county official who is presently running for a judgeship insists
that the boy had to be charged with some felony in order to be eligible for
services. What services would have not been open to this lad if he had been
charged with a lesser crime?
No
rational person denies that this boy needs serious and ongoing treatment and
detention, but to charge him with murder says more about the accusers than it
does about the boy! Murder, the willful
killing of another person, assumes malicious intent and comprehension on the
part of the suspect. Of course, I have
no information about this boy’s behavioral history, character or
stability. It may be that authorities
have that information and thus the charge. However, the stated purpose for the
charges against Ms. Lewis, the sending of an Alabama message, sounds more
political than it does corrective for an eight-year-old boy who is likely disturbed.
During
my childhood, I was raised in three institutions - a residential school for the
blind, an orphanage run by the Methodist Church, and a secular orphanage run, I
believe, by Broome County, New York.
Within the social structure of each of these institutions there existed,
even beyond the rules, a milieu of behavioral standards and expectations
largely set by the inhabitants of each institution.
In
the school for the blind, children who sounded funny or behaved strangely
seldom got the benefit of the doubt. We
had one boy I’ll call Richie, who had a speech impediment that was unnerving to
many of his fellow students. He was reasonably
capable of handling himself to a degree, but no one I knew, including myself, energized
his self-respect.
The
Methodist orphanage was something of an exception, I must acknowledge, which
was likely due to the prevalence of Methodist doctrine.
In
the secular orphanage, there was a boy I’ll call Ronnie who was forever in
trouble, mostly for petty and nettlesome behaviors that irritated his peers and
the staff to an extreme degree. I
sincerely hope that Ronnie has become a happy adult because he couldn’t have
been a very happy little boy. I’m referring
of course to individual self-esteem.
One’s self-esteem is what dictates to lesser and greater degrees the
course of one’s life.
Thus,
we come to the future for this boy.
While not forgetting that his behavior that night deprived little Kelci
of the future to which she was fully entitled, the fact of the matter is this
boy’s future is invariably going to have an effect on someone else’s
future. Since we weren’t there on the
night of Tuesday, October 10th, we cannot know exactly what stimulated this
boy’s actions. Perhaps he was “egged on”
by one of the other children. Perhaps he
had no idea that he had hurt Kelci. She
cried too much so he simply hit her a few times and she went to sleep. Perhaps
he did, too. What’s important now is not
so much what he did but how he might be treated to avoid such behavior in the
future. Out of necessity he will have to
be told what he did, if he hasn’t been told already. He will thus face the monumental task of
comprehending his actions and learning to forgive and actually love
himself. That’s what living with one’s
self is all about. Of course, there is
the possibility that he might be destroyed while serving in a reformatory (as Jeffrey
Dahmer was while in prison) but that can never lessen, let alone quash, the
heartache over little Kelci’s fate.
Our
sadness and outrage, although legitimate, pale in comparison to this lad’s
challenge to become a happy and productive human being. However, that’s exactly what he’ll have to
become in order to be worthy of sanctifying Kelci’s memory and thus to make
amends to the righteous rest of us!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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